At one point does Leia decide that Luke is the one? I am fairly certain he was included in the assault because he was already a pilot. It isn't as if he was leading a squadron or anything.
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Jack B NimbleApr 28 '11 at 19:06

9

Star Wars contain no logic at all, so this is not surprising at all (-;
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mbqApr 28 '11 at 19:38

I know that its a side point but Luke was not "The Chosen One" it was in fact Anikan. He killed the emperor and 'brought balance to the force'. But this is likely a discussion that needs its own thread. I think I'll start it in fact.
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VaughnJul 28 '11 at 15:59

It puzzles me why, after losing one Death Star to this design flaw, they built a second with exactly the same flaw. What were they thinking?
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WikisSep 21 '11 at 8:59

11 Answers
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Because whoever designed it didn't realize it was a fatal flaw. If you were a software developer (or designer) you'd know that it's impossible to design bugless software of any complexity. A Space Shuttle was destroyed on the account of a piece of foam. Mars-bound lander was lost due to a metric-imperial unit conversion bug. And so on and so forth.

In-universe, it was retconned to be not an uncommon design flaw, . To quote from SW Wiki:

In another example, Ice Station Beta was destroyed by Kyle Katarn when he planted sequencer charges in thermal exhaust ports throughout the facility.

"Would the Rebel Alliance had even attempted the mission if Leia didn't think Luke was the one?"

Leia did NOT think Luke was "the one". Or anything beyond a capable pilot. He was just another X-Wing pilot, not a designated shooter.

He didn't "have the force" up until he took that shot. Leia had no reason to know he had Jedi abilities.

Having any sort of exhaust ports on a space station would be a little on the stupid side to begin with. For one, you'd need a constant resupply of whatever is being dumped into space as exhaust and you'd be adding another acceleration vector to account for in navigation, and for two, with a large spherical station, you could easily take advantage of the great ratio of surface area to volume and turn portions of the surface into a huge radiator/heat sink and let the heat bleed off pretty rapidly into the vast coldness of space.
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PhoenixApr 29 '11 at 0:24

@Phoenix: Space is not cold. It is a vacuum = absence of matter and only matter can have a temperature. So a radiator would only be good for infra-red (heat) waves.
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Martin ScharrerApr 30 '11 at 11:53

I do not believe that the exhaust port was really a design flaw. The path to the port was heavily guarded by laser towers and the Death Star was able to launch fighters to defend itself.

I think the real flaw was that the Death Star only launched three fighters. It should have launched enough fighters to where anyone trying to run the trench would be immediately under such an intense barrage of laser fire that they'd have to take evasive maneuver out of the trench to survive or die like most of them did in the movie.

In the end it was the over confidence of the commanders of the Death Star that lead to its destruction, not the existence of some small reactor exhaust port.

They should at least have but a u-bend in the pipe - having a direct shaft into your reactor core is just asking for trouble ;)
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HorusKolApr 28 '11 at 23:07

Note that the Death Star had only just gone operational; its full fighter complement hadn't been delivered yet. And the Falcon had already knocked out a few during the original escape.
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TynamJan 28 '12 at 23:21

In the Star Wars novel, the explanation is given that the port would be useless if it were to be particle-shielded; however, it is ray-shielded. Obviously someone knew there may be a problem if that were to be targeted, and gave it the best protection possible while still allowing the port to do its job.

There is still a question; this is an auxiliary exhaust port "right below the main port". Why not target the main port? The main port would be bigger, right? Maybe the main port can be closed, or particle-shielded, to protect it from attack, and the station (or that part of it) could rely on the auxiliary port.

I think it was clearly a design flaw - the 2nd Death Start engineered a way around it (I believe it used multiple, smaller exhaust vents, which lacked the direct path to the reactor core) and it allowed a single fighter to destroy millions of people and uncounted trillions in resources for the cost of a proton torpedo (and a handful of fighters). I'd call that a design flaw.

It likely wouldn't have been such a big problem if the Empire had been smarter - the Death Star should have had screening elements to deal with smaller ships. The only reason they didn't have them is that they rushed to Yavin as soon as they confirmed it was the base, hoping to reach it before the rebels could evacuate or summon fleet elements.

it is hard to say what improvements the Death Star 2 would have had (in regards to the exhaust port), since the superstructure was only a little over 50% complete.
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XantecApr 29 '11 at 20:52

@Xantec: True, there's no visible way to tell, but in the novels (which ARE canon unless they contradict the movies) the lead designer of the 2nd Death Star discusses the changes he made to eliminate that design flaw.
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JeffMay 2 '11 at 13:38

From a purely technical standpoint, it was clearly a design flaw in that it went STRAIGHT DOWN. A simple P-trap (like the one under your sink) near the exit would have been enough to capture any incoming debris (including photon torpedos) near the surface of the Death Star where they would explode. They'd do damage there of course, but not allow a straight shot to the reactor core.

Or even multiple of these. Or having the vent make many turns or angles on its way up. Any of a number of simple engineering solutions would overcome this issue.

Is there really any such thing as a 'simple engineering solution' on a moon-sized space station? Building in a twisty, turny exhaust pipe would require massive changes to the internal layout - something they DID take into account in the 2nd Death Star.
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JeffApr 29 '11 at 13:32

And if it was the only or main exhaust port, a torpedo still would have destroyed the tube enough that it couldn't vent properly, so it would still eventually overheat and explode--though how long until that would be of course is a mystery.
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MufasaApr 29 '11 at 15:00

@Jeff, it would only require changes after the fact. If it had been designed that way to begin with, then the other things around it would have been similarly designed with it in mind. No changes required.
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Michael CampbellApr 29 '11 at 19:59

@Mufasa, that's true, if you assume that blowing up the port/pipe stopped the venting. It could very easily have just made a BIGGER vent leading to even better heat removal. Or heat venting elsewhere in the 'Star, which would be bad, but almost certainly less bad that complete annihilation.
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Michael CampbellApr 29 '11 at 20:01

@Mufasa I have to agree, I think it is clearly a design flaw.
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Glen WheelerApr 30 '11 at 11:59

Giant expensive contracts often have fatal flaws in our universe, so it follows that things would be similar in the Galaxy Far, Far Away (especially when it is convenient for the plot). In-universe, according to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels (1996) Death Star entry:

For weaponry, in addition to the superlaser, the Death Star has 15,000 capital ship turbolasers and over 700 tractor-beam projectors. There projectors could capture virtually any ship and, when working in conjunction with one another, could reel in even an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Death Star also maintained an awesome array of support ships and vehicles, with 7,000 TIE fighters, four strike cruisers, over 20,000 military and transport vessels, and over 11,000 combat vehicles.

Despite all these awesome advantages, simple errors doomed the station. First, the Death Star's defenses were built around the idea of repelling a capital ship attack; starfights were considered "insignificant" by Imperial military strategists. And when the Alliance mounted its assault over Yavin, the Rebels could only send a small force of X-wing and Y-wing fighters. Grand Moff Tarkin considered the attack inconsequential. He refused to launch TIE fighters in defense of the station, and only the TIE fights under Lord Vader's direct command were deployed against the Alliance's fighters.

As a result of those errors of arrogance, the mightiest weapon in the history of the galaxy was destroyed by a simple proton torpedo fired down an unshielded exhaust vent. This Achille's heel allowed the Empire's enemies to detonate the Death Star's power core and win the day.

According to the Death Star II entry:

Not only was the second Death Star larger and more deadly, but several flaws in the original design were corrected. The vulnerable thermal exhaust ports were replaced with millimeter-wide heat dispersion ducts, leaving no weak spots in this battle station's armor.

Well, it's only a fail because it allowed direct access to a vital area that potentially could be exploited for destructive means. But how big was the actual chance of anyone being able to exploit this weakness? It was reasonably well protected for such a "flaw".

Take a wall that's protecting you from shooters on the other side. There's a very small peephole in the wall that allows you to see what happens on the other side. Now there is a very, very small chance that one of the bullets will go through the hole and hit you. A better design would have been to install a mirror systen either externally or in a non-straight hole with an inbuilt reflection system to allow you to see what's on the other side or to protect the peephole by bulletproof glass.

The Empire doesn't regard a one-man fighter as a threat, or they'd have a tighter defense! Not a design flaw per se, but a flaw in doctrine. They let the same thing happen to Death Star #2. Work on a point defense system and stronger fighter coverage.

Out-of-universe answer: In the original scripts, there was only one Death Star, and it wasn't supposed to be destroyed until the third movie. When Lucas later decided to introduce a Death Star attack/destruction sequence in the first movie, he needed a way for the heroes to destroy it. Incidentally, early scripts for Empire and Jedi featured two new Death Stars.

As for the actual question - was the thermal exhaust port really a design flaw: Since it was the means by which the Death Star was blown to smithereens, the obvious answer is "YES!". The only question is how obvious the flaw was ahead of time - in my opinion, the answer to that question is "Not very". However, the fact mentioned above - that the architect knew about the flaw and planned to correct it - makes the Empire's failure to address the issue a lot harder to excuse.